Wednesday, July 19, 2017

As Akiko Hart recently posted on Facebook, Mental Health Europe and the British Psychological Society are looking for signatories to a letter endorsing the recent and ground breaking United Nations Special Rapporteur's report on mental health - to raise awareness of it among the media, policy makers and the mental health sector.The report calls for a shift away from isolating mental health services which are coercive and inappropriately medicalised to ones that are recovery and community-based & promote social inclusion.You can find the report here: http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/35/21.You can find our letter here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5ywdxhplXT3SFMyeGxoYUt5TFU.Some quotes from the report:-"The history of psychiatry and mental health care is marked by egregious rights violations"- "We have been sold a myth that the best solutions for addressing mental health challenges are medications and other biomedical interventions".- "Conventional wisdom based on a reductionist biomedical interpretation of complex mental health-related issues dominates mental health policies and services, even when not supported by research".- "For decades now, an evidence base informed by experiential and scientific research has been accumulating in support of psychosocial, recovery-oriented services and support and non-coercive alternatives to existing services".A number of organisations from the UK, Europe and beyond have signed. If you or your organisation would be interested in signing, please contact ailbhe.finn@mhe-sme.org or email UNlettergroup@gmail.com, and we’ll add your name.